1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates in general to streaming data, and more specifically, to a distributed network based system for retrieving data from an internetwork and converting the data to text-to-speech for a registered user.
2. Description of the Related Art
In today's advanced electronic economy, information is retrieved from a variety of sources using various devices. News and stock reports, email messages, and sports information are only some of the information retrieved from devices such as pagers, advanced phone systems, and the internet. Given the busy schedule of people's lifestyle, it is understood that a majority of the people are trying to accomplish an increasing number of tasks in a given time period or schedule. Reading reports and messages to remain updated or informed on the economy becomes an increasingly time consuming event. Reading newsworthy updates and events in electronic format usually requires focus on the subject matter at hand. Furthermore, extended work hours especially for that portion of the economy that performs much of their work on the computer do not find it pleasing to read such updates and events on the computer at the end of a workday.
Text-to-speech conversion can be performed by software tools that have become available. Text-to-speech software converts words in electronic form to audible form. However, while many products convert text-to-speech, such products are designed to be installed on a single user's computer. These software products require a large amount of memory allocation and periodically require updating due to advances made in the field of text-to-speech applications which can become costly, including the initial installation, to the end user over time if the end user desires to maintain the latest technology.